Soft skills wanted?! - Describing work ability and work demands with the capacity concept of the Mini-ICF-APP

This article in Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation. (GIO) introduces the rating for capacity disorders and capacity demands at work, the Mini-ICF-APP. An observer- and a self-rating for employees' capacities, and a rating for capacity demands of the workplace are available. Workplace and work demands as well as vocational reintegration of employees with (chronic) health impairments require knowledge of the (work) capacities of employees. In view of the increasingly important psychological work demands, it is important to know the psychological capacity profile of an employee and to compare it with the work demands. This means 1. identify the strengths and, where appropriate, the limitations of the employee's capacities (e.g. problems with group integration, flexibility and decision-making capacity), and 2. describe what a workplace fitting to the person's capacities might look like (e.g. individual work, making individual customer calls, bookkeeping) The Mini-ICF Rating for Psychological Capacity Impairments (Mini-ICF-APP, Linden et al. 2009) is an internationally validated assessment established in social medicine and work ability description to describe psychological capacity profiles by 13 psychological capacity dimensions. The 13 capacity dimensions enable a comparison of the capacity profile of the person and the demand profile of the workplace. The capacity dimensions to be assessed are (1) capacity to adapt to rules and routines, (2) capacity to plan and structure tasks, (3) flexibility, (4) application of competence and knowledge, (5) decision-making and judgement, (6) proactivity and spontaneous activities, (7) Resilience and endurance, (8) self-assertion, (9) conversation and contact with third parties, (10) group integration, (11) capacity to form close dyadic relationships, (12) self-care, and (13) mobility. In addition to the observer rating of capacities, further versions of the instrument have been developed: a self-rating version, and a version for the capacity-oriented work demand description for the creation of suitable jobs in the sense of the German Occupational Safety and Health Act (</n> 5 ArbSchG).